Sometimes I cannot bear to watch the telly news. Last night it seemed to be full of dead and dying children: 3 month boy mauled by family dogs; Gazan father kisses dead baby goodbye; the Baby P case; Gazan orphan draw pictures of her dead family; and so it goes.
Then the good lady asked me to watch Hotel Rwanda, recorded off-air some time ago. I managed 30 minutes I think.
Well I never! Really?
Non-news nuggets like this never cease to annoy me: the art of stating the bleeding obvious. It never hurts to highlight safety issues, especially in an area where there is a need for ongoing and drastic improvement. However, the smug complacency of whoever is driving the publicity smacks of an outfit that has so little passion for their ‘boggle’.
Public safety groups: if you’ve got an annual schedule of trying to promote your area of concern, please at least try to think about a new angle - you don’t have to do it that often, it shouldn’t be difficult.
Taking this piece as an example, it may have been more punchy to lead with the drug-taking statistics rather than, ‘young drivers take risks’.
Today, the BBC reports on a call from teachers for Youtube to be shut down. The naïveté of such a request from a body that represents purportedly intelligent people staggers me.
The closure of a social networking site will not stop teacher/pupil bullying, though it will remove one outlet for it. So that’s good, the little sods will just resort to the old fallback of a turd through the letterbox. Let’s be clear: bullying is not on the increase because it has more outlets, it’s on the increase because of declining respect for authority, and a singular lack of discipline being applied to kids at an early age.
Youtube video bullying is the symptom, the disease is parental complacency.
It’s becoming typical of our society to call for symptomatic relief, rather than face up to the hard graft of long-term cures.
Now, my radio station of choice for the morning just happens to be Smooth (nee Saga) so please don’t judge me too harshly. For waking up I like my news local, my music unchallenging, and my presenters subdued.
However, I’ve noticed that they’ve developed an annoying little format habit. Not content with a news bulletin every 30 mins, we get a summary of upcoming news every ten minutes or so. What? Yes, a summary. This takes the form of the newscaster saying something like, ‘…and in the news at 7.30 we discuss the three soldiers who died in Iraq last night…’. Yes, discuss.
Given that news bulletins on music stations are already terse little pockets of fact (and some may argue my use of the word ‘fact’ there), I find it hard to understand why you need to telegraph them with audio footnotes. I mean, they’re already bleeding summarised aren’t they? It’s not as if they’re going to give us a 15 minute news programme where there may be opportunity to get down and mucky with some real detail is it?
These stupid little precursors actually consume measurable airtime, to my mind wasting valuable music time on what is, after all, a bloody music station. I can just see the marketing meeting now, where some bozo suggested making the station sound more punchy, dynamic and with-it by plastering stupid space-fillers everywhere. Cobblers.
It’s part of the same malady we suffer when watching telly news these days. Sodding ticker-tape streamers at the bottom of the screen, optional multiscreen content, and all the time above this we have a ‘real’ programme that contains scant facts spun out over 30 minutes, repeat ad nauseum.
The next time you watch a TV news report amuse yourself by playing Count the Fact. Then measure this figure against how many minutes of spume were alongside it.
Heard recently on radio news - I can’t identify the source as my memory is crap, but trust me, it may be paraphrased but the sentiment is intact:
In response to the direct question, ‘…and how are you going to solve the problem?’, the useless answer was, ‘…we’re going to examine the problem, and then pursue the best way to solve the problem…’
What beggared belief was that this response was accepted as an appropriate answer, and the interviewer moved on. What shoddy times we live in.
I’ve nothing but sympathy for the British Navy personnel who are currently being held at Iran’s pleasure. It would seem that their captivity has become a lesser issue than that of which version of events is more accurate.
I noted with some surprise the language used in a service held in captive Faye Turney’s local church. The vicar was heard on national telly to say that ‘all our thoughts were with the captives and especially Faye Turney’. The BBC’s news page for this event doesn’t relay this part of the service.
I’m not against the idea of demonstrating support for a local resident but is it not odd for a Christian service to exhibit a less than Christian sentiment? The singling out of an individual, by requesting special favour in prayer to God, is morally wrong - whether you’re a religious adherent or not. I’d expect this kind of mistake from a member of the public, or a local newscaster, but not a presumably morally-educated spokesperson for the Church.
I hope that this was simply word misuse. To my mind the phrase is more acceptable with the word “including” instead of “especially” - but shouldn’t we expect Rev Sue Caddy to examine her words in detail before delivery? This was no simple Sunday service being dished out to a few townsfolk, it was treated to pre-arranged high-profile media exposure.
A trivial slip-up? Or an indicator of a more deeply rooted malady?
BBC NEWS | England | Dorset | Trapped man ignored by shoppers
Oh for Pete’s sake. Can you begin to think down to the level of the people who ignored this bloke? Perhaps they thought it was some kind of Candid Camera or Jeremy Beadle stunt. Perhaps they didn’t think at all.
But, should “thought” come into it? Imagine yourself in the position of seeing a person stuck down an open manhole. Conjur up his presumably genuine-sounding cries for help, and couple that with the fact that the bloke looks old enough to be a pensioner.
What would you do? Myself, I know I’d try to lean down to help, and failing that wait with him while attempting to get help from another quarter - 999 or otherwise. To be honest this course of action doesn’t take thought - merely decency.
Note I’m not trying to make myself sound like a hero - but surely I should behave like a civilised human being, and try to help?
Take note - if we needed proof that the UK is populated by blinkered scumbags then this is it.
